Unable to stop Canadian oil drilling and tar sand extraction programs, environmental groups are now trying to block any pipeline that is proposed out of the oil producing regions.

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Bitumen, otherwise known as tar sand, is oil-soaked dirt that needs to be cooked to extract the oil.

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It issued a press release in January trumpeting new technology that cheaply upgrades the kind of heavy oil found in Venezuela and mined out of Canada's tar sands with rapid applications of heat using sand as the heat carrier.

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